Shirt buttons slid from their buttonholes to reveal more and more of that wonderful chest she loved to look at so much. Now she allowed herself the pleasure of touching, placing her fingers on his chest where dark hair coiled into the hollow between tight pectoral muscles. Then, because she couldn’t resist, the moist tip of her tongue followed suit.
The air left his lungs on a heavy rush that brought her head up sharply. She looked up at him, he looked down at her, and the pace suddenly altered dramatically. They fell on each other’s mouths with a series of deep hot hisses while his urgent hands stripped her flimsy scrap of a bra away and hers pushed the shirt off his back.
Then it was flesh on flesh, pleasure tangling up with pleasure as the whole thing shot off on its own natural journey. His arms were crushing her, his kiss was deep, their laboured breathing hissed into the warm golden light of the slow-dying day as he manoeuvred her down onto the bed. He came down with her, his skin was moist, she yearned to taste it but the kiss was just too good to break away from. His hands began caressing her with so much sensual expertise that she arched and flexed as sensation washed over her in waves and scraped restless fingernails over his shoulder blades with enough urgency to make him shudder in response.
‘Sorry,’ she whispered helplessly.
He released a thick laugh and said, ‘Do it again.’
The exchange of words broke the kiss. Without the kiss she was free to indulge herself by tasting him. He liked her nails so she ran them down his back, loving the feel of his muscles flexing pleasurably, loving the groan he uttered just before he claimed one of her breasts with his mouth.
Desire stirred and writhed like an unleashed serpent deep within her abdomen. He must have known, because his hand was suddenly playing her stomach, moving downward, fingertips slipping beneath the scrappy fabric of her briefs. She knew he was going to touch her, knew that this was it, the moment she had been waiting for for what seemed the whole of her life. A tight and tingling breathtaking anticipation sent her still, which made him lift his head and send her a sharp questioning look.
‘What?’ he said.
‘You,’ she said in a sexually tense little voice.
He understood. His eyes went black, his features tightening into a very male, passionate cast. The hand slipped lower, fingertips drifting through dusky curls to seek out warm moist tissue that was the centre of her world right now. She groaned then gasped as pleasure licked with stunning intensity through to her toes and fingertips. He murmured something she didn’t hear—it could have been her name or it could have been a curse because she knew she was rocketing right out of control here.
He encouraged her though. With the mastery of the seasoned lover, he orchestrated her pleasure trip through the senses. Did he know? He had to know. Surely no man took this much care to please the woman he was making love to without expecting some similar stimulation back by return, unless he knew that this was her first experience?
The last of her clothing was trailed away; she was vaguely aware of him ridding himself of his own. When his hands were busy elsewhere his mouth took up the burning seduction of her breasts, her navel, brushing hot moist kisses along the inner surface of her golden thighs.
Flesh burned against flesh; long restless limbs tangled in a love-knot caress. They rolled. He came above her, her hands locked around his neck. It was then that she felt the probing force of his masculinity and as her insides curled in anticipation she uttered his name on a sensual breath.
He liked it; she felt his response in the small shudder that ripped through his body. She liked that, and responded with a lithe flexing of her hips that made her exquisitely aware of the power he was still keeping in check.
‘Eve, give me your mouth.’
She gave him her mouth, willingly, hungrily. She gave him every little bit of herself that she could possibly give. He took it all. Like a man leaping into a fiery furnace knowing he was about to get severely burned, he made a single strangled sound in his throat then, swift and sure, he claimed the passage he had prepared for himself.
It was wild, it was shocking, it was shamelessly exhilarating. Barriers broke; she winced on a soft little gasp. He paused, touched her cheek with unsteady fingers, gently combed her hair away from her face.
‘Eve,’ he breathed.
She opened her eyes and made contact with the burning black density of his. He looked different, darker, masculine, more her man than ever.
‘Yes,’ she breathed, closed her eyes again, then made a single stretching movement that fastened her to him as a whole new hot probing journey held her in its spectacular thrall. He took her to places she hadn’t known existed; he taught her things about her that held her trapped on the pin-piercing pinnacle of discovery for long agonising seconds before he tipped her over the edge with the sudden increased rush of masculine thrust. She learned what it was like to lose touch with everything but a swelling pulsing pleasure of the senses.
When it was over it was all she could do to hang onto him while he lay heavily on top of her with their pounding heartbeats throbbing all around.
He went to move. She stopped him. ‘Wait,’ she whispered. She didn’t want to miss a single sense-soaring moment in this act of momentous importance to her. She had waited so very long for this to happen, had never been slightly tempted to experiment because she had been so determined to wait for the right man to come along—the one she would know instinctively was the one man for her. Marriage, wedding gowns, playing the shy virgin bride had never come into her perfect dream. It had just had to be the right man. She’d found that man, and nothing—no moment in time—was ever going to feel as special as this.
CHAPTER TWELVE
EVE’S sigh was soft against his shoulder; it whispered the pleasure still permeat
ing her blood. Ethan knew the feeling; it was with him also. But that didn’t mean he was feeling good about this.
What had he done—?
What the hell had he done? He didn’t deserve this, he did not deserve one half second of what she had just given to him. Now he was desperate to move, to separate from this incredible creature so that he could take stock—come to terms with what this was going to mean to the both of them.
He felt her begin to stir beneath him. It became the most sensually evocative stretch of the female body that began at her shoulders and arched her slender spine and flexed the cradle of her hips where he received the full kick of the movement because they were still joined.
At least with that stirring she also gave him permission to move by slackening the grip her arms had around him. Using his forearms as braces to take his weight, he levered himself away from her, and shuddered at her soft quivering gasp as he withdrew other parts. The gasp didn’t surprise him. He might be wishing himself a million miles away at this precise moment, but his body certainly wasn’t agreeing.
It wanted more—already. It wanted him to begin the whole wildly exciting process all over again.